Hearing to reopen Bay Mills Vanderbilt casino may be postponed

April 03, 2012

LANSING — Five months after the Bay Mills Indian Community opened a small casino in Vanderbilt in November 2010, a federal judge struck down an appeal by the tribe to remain open and ordered the 84 slot machine operation closed until the matter could resolved in the courts at a future date.

In March 2011, federal Judge Paul L. Maloney ruled in favor of an injunction filed against the Bay Mills tribe on behalf of the state attorney general’s office and the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, who asserted the tribe had illegally opened the Vanderbilt casino and was not operating on Indian land as claimed by Bay Mills leaders.

On Monday, Joy Yearout, spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, said a May 31 court date had been scheduled last week for the case to be heard by the Michigan Court of Appeals, but because of a scheduling conflict, her office would be requesting a different date for the hearing.

She said the attorney general’s office would likely submit a formal request to the Court of Appeals sometime next week to reschedule the hearing on the merits of the case for a later date.

As a result of the injunction against the Bay Mills tribe to remain open, 20 Vanderbilt casino employees were laid off. The shuttered casino is located at the former site of a visitor information center owned by Treetops Resort at the north village limits of Vanderbilt.

The Bay Mills tribe purchased the property in 2010 just prior to renovating the building and opening it for use as a casino on Nov. 3, 2010.